The present invention generally relates to a method for receiving and shipping items and more particularly to a method for receiving manufactured items, such as vehicles which are to be transported to a variety of desired destinations, for efficiently sorting these received items in a manner which substantially increases the liklihood that these items will be respectively transported to these certain desired destinations, and for efficiently shipping these sorted items to these desired destinations.
Items, such as vehicles, are usually transported to and temporarily stored within a relatively large yard or xe2x80x9cstaging areaxe2x80x9d which is relatively close to the manufacturing plant at which the vehicles were created. These vehicles or other items are respectively required to be shipped to a wide variety of locations or destinations and typically remain in the yard until placed upon a truck, railcar, or other vehicle or conveyance for transport to their respective destination.
Typically, vehicles are driven into the yard as they are created by the manufacturing plant. The respective destination of each of these vehicles is usually coded and contained within or placed upon a route code label which is selectively attached to the xe2x80x9cpassenger side windowxe2x80x9d of each of the respective vehicles. Oftentimes, these vehicles are placed at any convenient location within the yard and substantially no record is maintained of the current location of each of the vehicles within the yard.
Hence, one or more individuals are typically required to frequently xe2x80x9csearch the yardxe2x80x9d in order to identify groups of vehicles which are xe2x80x9cbound forxe2x80x9d or which are to be transported to the same destination. Such xe2x80x9cmanual identificationxe2x80x9d or manual sorting not only undesirably increases the amount of time required to ship these vehicles but further increases the liklihood of error, thereby causing some of the vehicles to be transported to an incorrect destination. Further, this arrangement does not allow a certain vehicle to be quickly and easily identified within the yard in order to allow the vehicle to be serviced before shipment. For example and without limitation, certain quality concerns may arise relative to certain components contained within a manufactured vehicle after it has been placed into the yard but before it has been shipped, thereby necessitating a repair or modification of the temporarily stored vehicle. Hence, it is highly desirable to allow a vehicle to be quickly identified in order to allow the vehicle to be serviced and/or modified before it is shipped.
A number of transport conveyances or railcars are also typically present in close proximity to the yard and are selectively and cooperatively used to transport these vehicles to the respectively required and desired destinations. Each of these conveyances and/or railcars must typically be manually identified by these individuals and correctly associated with a certain destination (i.e. each conveyance or railcar is to travel to a certain destination from the yard and each of these respective destinations must be manually and correctly identified and used with the vehicle destination information to determine the identity of those vehicles which are respectively xe2x80x9cloaded ontoxe2x80x9d each of the conveyances or railcars). Such manual identification not only undesirably increases the overall time and the cost of shipping such vehicles, but also undesirably increases the liklihood of shipment error.
There is therefore a need for a new and improved method for receiving and shipping items which overcomes at least some of the previously delineated drawbacks of prior methods.
It is a first object of the present invention to provide a method for receiving and shipping items which overcomes at least some of the previously delineated drawbacks of prior methods.
It is a second object of the present invention to provide a method for receiving and shipping items which overcomes at least some of the previously delineated drawbacks of prior methods and which provides a substantially accurate indication of the location of each received item within a storage yard.
It is a third object of the present invention to provide a method for receiving and shipping items which overcomes at least some of the previously delineated drawbacks of prior methods and which automatically identifies each of the vehicles, conveyances, and/or railcars which are to transport these items and their respective final destinations.
It is a fourth object of the present invention to provide a method for receiving and shipping items which overcomes at least some of the previously delineated drawbacks of prior methods and which automatically identifies a desired destination for each of the items and which further automatically and/or electronically stores the location of each of the items within a storage yard or facility.
According to a first aspect of the present invention, a method for receiving goods is provided. The method comprises the steps of providing a yard; receiving an item; placing the item at a certain location within the yard; and storing the certain location, effective to allow the item to be quickly located.
According to a second aspect of the present invention a method for shipping an item to a certain destination is provided. The method comprises the steps of providing a unique identification code for the item; providing a second unique identification code for the destination; providing a device; communicating the first and second unique identification codes to the device, thereby allowing the item to be shipped to the certain destination.
These and other aspects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from a reading of the following detailed description of the preferred embodiment of the invention and by reference to the following drawings.